cigar-tin stories by darryl joel berger

pattern by etsy

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.
THEODOR WIESENGRUND ADORNO, Minima Moralia

escape from a dreaming planet

Art is one of man's few serious activities.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought

the tiniest of letters

In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.
TOM ROBBINS, Skinny Legs and All

The heart of a maiden is a dark forest.

The Maiden; mixed media on cradled wood panel, 18 x 24 x 1.75 inches.

Second blonde in a row for me, while still on this kick of icons (martyrs, idols, demigods, characters more poster than real) in a larger format. But the ideas for working small are creeping in, too.

Strange times. I look at the news and see spidery arrangements in lies and advertising. Of course the broken centre of this is the president of the United States, a character so blurry and appalling as to not seem real. Which, in a way, he is not. It seems even within the confines of his own skull he is not. The cultural historian Patrick Wright once described him as

A smudged deadbeat left over from the Reagan era … and propped up in a temporary kind of way by ailing US and Japanese banks that couldn’t afford to let him expire completely … If Trump was in the White House which, as he was rash enough to hint in those undiminished days, he might well be before too long, then he could follow the examples of Presidents Reagan and Harding, and look for astrological anchorage in the stars.

Or Twitter. That was in 1991. I guess this is the logical wreckage of neoliberalism, of the the triumph of markets and money and branded individualism above all. Trump speaks the language of reality television, which is really very simple: promise anything to anyone, and otherwise say whatever you need to say to confuse the issue, while advancing spaces in your mind. Even on TV this is sometimes dubious.

My attention to this is sporadic, at best. All I can do is work. There are really very few things I am any good at. I hope painting is one of them.